With our clinic providing us a 4-day weekend over New Year’s, we knew we had to do something worthwhile to celebrate in California. We asked what our friends Liz and Corwin were planning, and they threw out the idea of heading to the SnowGlobe music festival in South Lake Tahoe. After looking it up, we were excited to plan our end of the year celebration further. We soon found out our other friends Bo and Alexa were also down to join. It would be a 3.5-hour drive from Clearlake southeast across California to get to South Lake Tahoe. We then had to figure out where to stay nearby the festival. By the end of our preliminary talks, we had a group of nine people ready to party, so we started looking into Airbnbs and found an awesome cabin that would fit all of us. All of us bought our festival tickets in advance and we were set to go!
SnowGlobe Music Festival
This 3-day electronic dance music festival takes place at the South Lake Tahoe community college grounds and culminates at 1:00-2:00 a.m. on New Year’s Day. It has three main stages, two outdoor and one indoor called the Igloo. Roughly 40+ artists in this genre come to play anywhere from 1-2 hours, so they are consistently switching out. The price for our tickets in advance was about $260, as we wanted the option for the festival’s shuttle to transport us if we didn’t feel like walking from our Airbnb. We ended up using the shuttle only in a couple situations where it was too cold to walk, which was clutch. Honestly it only became too cold once the music was over in the dead of night. When you are dancing with thousands of other people, you tend to stay pretty warm.
Cool lights at Snowglobe Music Festival
Great outdoor EDM concerts!
Snowglobe for New Year’s 2018 in South Lake Tahoe!
Cool lights at Snowglobe Music Festival
Great outdoor EDM concerts!
Snowglobe for New Year’s 2018 in South Lake Tahoe!
Watching the light shows reflect off the snow-covered evergreens is one of the sweetest things as you look up into the sky. It was one of the best New Year’s celebrations that we’ve had. Our favorite artists this year were Zedd, Travis Scott, Khalid, Alison Wonderland, San Holo, Snakehips, and Jai Wolf. The festival itself has a solid number of tents set up with food and drinks, but mostly we just used our own supplies at the cabin prior to heading to the grounds. They have plenty of water fill-up stations around too, so we recommend bringing your empty Camelbak or other water containers. If you like saving some money and know you’re going to this festival, then snag the advance tickets quickly when they go on sale as all ticket options usually sell out. If you want more info, check out SnowGlobe.
South Lake Brewing Co.
We had some time before the festival started each of the three days, so we all set out to explore some of our surroundings. On our way into town we kept passing this South Lake Brewing Co. so eventually we stopped in. This brewery has a good location with plenty of room to hold a lot of people. It has some good food and decent varieties for beer. There’s plenty of activities available here to keep you drinking as well, including ping pong, corn hole, and board games.
Heavenly Mountain Resort
Also, right around town is the well-known Heavenly Mountain and it’s corresponding popular ski village and gondola. After some deliberation, it was decided that this was too good of an option to pass up. Even though the snow wasn’t great, we bought our 1-day ski passes and rented our skis right in the village to head up the mountain. At this time there wasn’t much snow, so about half of the California runs were open and only a few runs on the Nevada side of the mountain were open. Nevertheless, it was immediately worth it to ski, as it provided immaculate views over the whole Lake Tahoe area including the lake and snowcapped mountains. Closer to the Nevada side it was a drastic change in scenery, with no trace of snow off on the horizon and full-on desert taking over. We skied for 5-6 hours and then headed back to the cabin to prepare for another night of SnowGlobe.
Heavenly Mountain
Boarding crew at Heavenly
Ski and Board Crew at Heavenly
Looking over at the Nevada side from Heavenly
Heavenly Mountain
Boarding crew at Heavenly
Ski and Board Crew at Heavenly
Looking over at the Nevada side from Heavenly
Emerald Bay State Park
On our last day (New Year’s Eve) of the festival, we drove around 12 miles north from South Lake Tahoe on the west side of the lake to hike Emerald Bay State Park. As soon as you hit the park on Highway 89, there is a lookout called Inspiration Point, which is quite possibly one of the best shots of Lake Tahoe. For our first hike we chose the Cascade Falls Trail. This is one of the more popular hikes in the park, with the trailhead located directly across from Inspiration Point. It is 1.5 miles out and back with 230 ft elevation. Once at the beautiful falls, take some pictures out to the east, as you overlook Cascade Lake, Emerald Bay, and South Lake Tahoe.
Cascade Lake
Such a fun winter hike!
Cascade Lake
Such a fun winter hike!
Our second hike before the music festival started one last time was Granite Lake and Maggie’s Peaks Trail, a ~4-mile, 1800 ft elevation path starting from the Bayview trailhead marker. This is an ideal hike to introduce anyone to the Lake Tahoe trail system. It is relatively easy on the way up to Granite Lake, with awesome views of the bay. Soon after Granite Lake, the trail starts to switchback all the way up to the saddle area between the north and south Maggie’s Peaks. At this time of year, we recommend having shoe spikes or crampons as you gain your way up to the saddle area. Once there, no true trails lead you to the top of either peak, but you could probably make it. We decided on just staying in the saddle as our daylight was fading fast. Do not feel bad if you stop where we did- you still get amazing views of Lake Tahoe to the east and Desolation Wilderness to the west. All in all, this hike took us three hours.
Granite Lake and Maggie’s Peaks Trail: 3.6 miles and 1,761 ft
View from the saddle of Maggie’s Peaks
Found a cool spot overlooking Emerald Bay!
Granite Lake is the small frozen lake and Lake Tahoe is the huge one in the background.
Another shot of the beautiful Emerald Bay
Looking west from Maggie’s saddle
Granite Lake and Maggie’s Peaks Trail: 3.6 miles and 1,761 ft
View from the saddle of Maggie’s Peaks
Found a cool spot overlooking Emerald Bay!
Granite Lake is the small frozen lake and Lake Tahoe is the huge one in the background.
Another shot of the beautiful Emerald Bay
Looking west from Maggie’s saddle
We enjoyed our time in South Lake Tahoe tremendously. Sure, we would’ve liked more snow for our skiing adventure, but this actually became a blessing in disguise. Without tire chains, we definitely would not have made it over the winding and steep highways if there was any decent amount of snow. We want to come back to the Lake Tahoe area when it has more snowfall though, or on the contrary when it is summertime, because that also sounds like a fun trip.